The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal[715] memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle.  Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  The way of life is wonderful.  It is by abandonment.  The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion.  “A man,” said Oliver Cromwell,[716] “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.”  Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men.  For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in the gaming and war, ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.

NOTES

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR

[Footnote 1:  Games of strength.  The public games of Greece were athletic and intellectual contests of various kinds.  There were four of importance:  the Olympic, held every four years; the Pythian, held every third Olympic year; and the Nemean and Isthmian, held alternate years between the Olympic periods.  These great national festivals exercised a strong influence in Greece.  They were a secure bond of union between the numerous independent states and did much to help the nation to repel its foreign invaders.  In Greece the accomplished athlete was reverenced almost as a god, and cases have been recorded where altars were erected and sacrifices made in his honor.  The extreme care and cultivation of the body induced by this national spirit is one of the most significant features of Greek culture, and one which might wisely be imitated in the modern world.]

[Footnote 2:  Troubadours.  In southern France during the eleventh century, wandering poets went from castle to castle reciting or singing love-songs, composed in the old Provencal dialect, a sort of vulgarized Latin.  The life in the great feudal chateaux was so dull that the lords and ladies seized with avidity any amusement which promised to while away an idle hour.  The troubadours were made much of and became a strong element in the development of the Southern spirit.  So-called Courts of Love were formed where questions of an amorous nature were discussed in all their bearings; learned opinions were expressed on the most trivial matters, and offenses were tried.

Some of the Provencal poetry is of the highest artistic significance, though the mass of it is worthless high-flown trash.]

[Footnote 3:  At the time this oration was delivered (1837), many of the authors who have since given America a place in the world’s literature were young men writing their first books.  “We were,” says James Russell Lowell, “still socially and intellectually moored to English thought, till Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and glories of blue water.”]